NYC Finally Bends to Covid Reality

CLAY: In Buck Sexton’s home of New York City, Eric Adams, the mayor there, has finally come out and said that he is not going to require 2- to 4-year-olds to wear a mask. There was never any basis for this at all. But there is at least some measure of sanity. Let me play cut 23 from New York City’s mayor.

BUCK: He’s not going by the science, just to be clear — and I don’t even mean in the more macro, overall masks for children do not work is insane, is child abuse, the whole thing. But beyond that, it’s because the new health director for the City of New York — I forgot the guy’s name; he just got brought on with the new mayoral administration — said that masking kids forever is what he recommends, forever for toddlers.

CLAY: Wow.

BUCK: Somehow, these abject morons think that masking the people who are statistically at the least risk — as we have said until we are blue in the face. I mean, Clay, you get tired of it. I get tired of it. There’s a reason we’re still talking about it, which I’ll get into in one second. But if you’re going to force-mask anybody — and I want to be very clear I don’t believe in masking anyone.

But if you are going to force-mask people based upon risk, it would be the exact opposite in the age spectrum of senior citizens. But senior citizens vote, and people who are woke libs who want to virtue signal want to make sure that their kids are protected so they look like they’re more in tune with “the science.” Basically, bad parents; I’m just going to say it.

And what’s important to recognize, I think, with the Mayor Adams change here, which is because of the pressure he received after the jackass came out and said that they should maybe mask kids forever. What was it 2- to 4-year-olds — I can’t keep up — or is it 2- to 5-year-olds?

CLAY: It’s 2- to 4-year-olds are required now to be masked in New York.

BUCK: It’s not okay that his framework here for the decision is as long as cases stay low. And this is why Clay and I are here to remind you, and if you don’t think it doesn’t matter for, remind yourself of that when you’re on an Amtrack or a flight or a federal building, they’re still clinging to this fiction that they’re being reasonable by basing mask policy on caseload.

It’s completely insane. It never worked. It failed every time. But they’re leaving the framework in place so that they can bring it back. He even makes it sounds like they might bring it back in a matter of weeks. Austria just dropped its mask mandate two weeks ago, Clay. They’re having a surge. They brought the mask mandate back!

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: You’re a guy understands markets and betting. I wish there was a place I could put money on whether or not masking will flatten the curve in Austria. I would bet every dollar I have, literally every dollar I have that it will not make even a statistically significant difference. But that’s where we are.

CLAY: Yeah. It makes no difference. And this is worth mentioning, because he says they’re going to take it off 2- and 4-year-olds. Two things that I think are going to be a canary-in-a-coal-mine moment coming up for New York City. First of all, Buck, Major League Baseball. I know a lot of people out there listening to us are Major League Baseball fans.

I think I’m correct; Major League Baseball returns on April 7th. The Mets and Yankees in New York City both have a large number of players who are unvaccinated for covid. And those players are not going to be able to play in outdoor baseball games because of New York City’s covid rules. You think Kyrie Irving — and this is why I think it’s such a canary-in-a-coal-mine moment, because it’s so significant.

You think that Kyrie Irving, the absurdity of him not getting to play indoors is getting a lot of attention? Wait until top Mets and Yankee players can’t play in New York City but everywhere else in Major League Baseball — except, by the way, Canada, where they won’t be able to allowed to play against the Blue Jays.

BUCK: Think about the absurdity of this, and this is actually what Jen Psaki fell back into pretty recently, when she said, “Well, the reason we need masks on planes is because there’s areas of high and medium and low transmission.”

CLAY: It’s insane.

BUCK: No rational, emotionally healthy adult American is sitting around reading right now the day in, day out covid numbers as to whether they’re in a high transmission, medium transmission or low transmission. I don’t even know what New York is and I’m here, and this place is the craziest. New York City has been crazier than any place in the country.

San Francisco is close. LA is close. New York City has been the most insane with all this stuff. I have absolutely no idea. I guess maybe we’re high-ish transmission comparatively. But then remember how they changed all the numbers and we’re supposed to pretend that the metrics didn’t dramatically shift? We would drop this and just talk about the border and economy and other things, which we obviously do here, too. But Clay and I are telling you, they’re going to try to bring this stuff back.

CLAY: A hundred percent they are. That’s the second part of what I was going to say. The New York City, the Mets and Yankees will be a big deal. The numbers have started to tick up in New York City because this new BA.2 variant is there. And if you look at the latest data, New York is likely to go back up. So to what extent is it going to go back up?

And if New York does, probably other places will as well. Now, the rates of covid are really low everywhere. But New York City has started to see a small tick back up. In fact, the state of New York — I’m looking right now, Buck, at the New York Times covid numbers, the state of New York — is up 21 percent in terms of covid infections in the last 14 days.

So the nadir, the low point has been reached, and now you’ll start to see a little bit of a blip back up. And that’s going to give the Faucis of the world cover to start to argue, “Oh, my God, we’ve got to take the masks away.” Which, Buck, is what Fauci said on Sunday. They let him out of his bunker. They let him back on national television. Cut 26: Fauci saying we have to be prepared to reinstitute covid restrictions.

BUCK: He is a maniac, and I mean that. It’s not hyperbole when I say that Fauci, I think, is the most destructive person in America. I think he is more directly responsible for misery and for bad health outcomes, by the way. I mean, when you look at the data on what it has done to seniors to be kept away from their families. I see in my own life, what it means when the family is all together — you do too, Clay — versus when people are separated from each other for long periods of time.

Especially for seniors who live to see the kids, grandkids, this is such an important part of life. Their risk of stroke, of heart attack, all of that went dramatically up. And it makes sense when you think about it. You’re in isolation, not getting exercise, not getting sunlight. Not living your life. Your immune system becomes suppressed.

Fauci is responsible for more catastrophically bad outcomes and bad policies than any human being in America, I would argue in the world, when it comes to covid. And the fact that he still keeps getting put on TV? He’s a menace. Actually a menace!

CLAY: Amen. I saw it today, Buck, I don’t know if you saw this headline: Number of alcohol deaths up 25%. It was kind of a joke that people would sit around during 2020 lockdowns and talk about how much more alcohol was consumed. But people were high stress. They were at home. They were surrounded by the kids, and sometimes there’s a lot of people out there who feel like they need some solace.

And we’re starting to see the toll of all of these things. We knew that overdose deaths skyrocketed. I think when you take people away from having their Alcohol Anonymous meetings, when you take them away from their churches, when you take them away from their families and social outlets, people a lot of times engage in more destructive behavior.

This is not some revolutionary idea. And we are reaping now the whirlwind of many of these decisions. Not to mention, Buck, we talked a lot about the number of people who chose not to go for their regular checkups, and now rates of cancer are skyrocketing, heart disease.

BUCK: Exactly what some of us, you and I among them, were warning at the beginning. Cancer screenings now… What’s happened is that they’re finding a lot more stage three, stage four, inoperable, terminal cancers, that would have been caught earlier, but (impression), “We had to shut down all the hospitals for hospital capacity, for covid. We had to make sure that we shut down different wings so we had all the beds!” The health community has destroyed its credibility, and they need to own up to that.

CLAY: They certainly do. And, by the way, think of all the people who had health-related conditions that were so terrified of covid that they chose not to get treated. And they were far more in danger from those health conditions. We talk about covid, but heart disease is the number one killer by far. You tell people not to exercise. You tell them to stay at home and eat unhealthily and behave unhealthily. Heart disease is reaping a whirlwind in terms of its growth because of these choices.